Hot Topics:

Boulder sees hundreds turn out to exercise gun rights, or protest

100 high-capacity magazines gone in 20-minute giveaway

by Alex Burness Camera staff

Posted:
03/16/2013 10:14:38 AM MDT

Updated:
03/17/2013 04:37:00 PM MDT

Colorado's ideological battle over gun rights was played out in stark fashion Saturday in Boulder, where a gun magazine giveaway was forced to turn away some people due to high demand, while at least 100 people protested silently a short distance away.

People were lining up as early as 7 a.m. outside Boulder Gunsport, 1707 14th St., for "Operation Mountain Standard," a fundraising event organized by Longmont resident and Marine Corps veteran Savant Suykerbuyk. His plan was to collect donations to Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a Colorado gun lobby.

In return, donors received gun magazines designed to carry more than 15 rounds of ammunition. His goal was to distribute as many high-capacity magazines as possible before a law placing a 15-round limit on magazines, passed by Colorado lawmakers earlier this week, is signed into law by Gov. John Hickenlooper and goes into effect.

Django Hope holds a protest sign, while her mother, Jennifer, right, get a hug from Amy Muller, as dozens of people held a silent protest on the corner of 14th Street and Canyon Boulevard this morning in Boulder .over a nearby high-capacity gun magazine giveaway.
(
CLIFF GRASSMICK
)

"What we're trying to do is to get as many of these magazines in people's hands before this ban hits. If people have them before the bill is signed, they get grandfathered in," said Suykerbuyk, 25, before the event was underway.

The idea for the event originated on a Reddit.com guns forum, and Suykerbuyk decided to take the lead after talking to other Second Amendment advocates. Gun owners from across the country donated the magazines distributed at the event.

Suykerbuyk owns nine guns and said he carries one on him at all times. He worries that the impending magazine limit will impair his ability to protect himself from assailants.

"A lot of people argue that they want to restrict magazines so that bad guys will have to reload more often," he said. "Well, I don't want to have to reload a bunch of times if I have multiple intruders coming into my home."

Those who are already in possession of high-capacity magazines before the law takes effect, he said, "are legal owners of those magazines. You cannot buy, sell, or transfer magazines after that law is signed, but as long as you have them before it is, it's legal."

By 9 a.m. Saturday, when the giveaway kicked off, there were roughly 75 people lined up. A $10 contribution earned donors 21 and older a handgun magazine, and donations of $20 earned those 18 and older a rifle magazine. With a limit of two magazines per person, and only 100 magazines to distribute, all were gone in 20 minutes, with numerous people turned away, empty-handed.

The AR-15 magazines, intended for semi-automatic rifles, sold out in less than 10 minutes.

"Everybody wanted two of them," Suykerbuyk said.

The donors expressed varying motives for obtaining the high-capacity magazines, from self-defense to pure recreation.

Denver-area hunting hobbyist Dante Nicholas, 31, said a 15-round magazine would be ineffective in hunting "varmints" and coyotes.

"They travel fast and they never stop moving, so a 30-round mag is the only way to take out a pack," he said.

Littleton's Alex Martens, 21, simply called the magazines "an accessory for a toy."

Meanwhile, on the south side of Canyon Boulevard, Together Colorado, a multi-denominational group of Boulder-area clergy members took part in a "silent prayer witness," in opposition to the gun magazine giveaway.

"We come today as people of peace, people of compassion and faith, seeking ways to end gun violence," a Together Colorado statement read. "We affirm that peace begins with each of us, in our homes, on our streets, in our theaters, in our schools and in our churches."

While the giveaway was still underway, about 100 protesters had gathered along the south side of Canyon Boulevard, and by 10 a.m., they stretched for nearly the length of the block between 13th and 14th streets. Organizers said they had chosen a location close to the magazine giveaway, but not within direct view of it, in order not to be confrontational.

"This is not intended to encourage head-on confrontation," said Sheila Dierks, a spokeswoman for Together Colorado. "We're concerned about high-capacity magazines, but we're mostly concerned about the gun violence culture. Aurora is a reality. The number of gun deaths in Denver is a reality. We can talk about keeping the guns out of the hands of the bad guys, but one of the ways you do that is by having just legislation."

The group of clergy members had said in a letter to the Camera that it believes the Operation Mountain Standard event is a "perversion of Second Amendment rights and a great threat to the safety of our citizens."

In addition to passing the 15-round limit on magazines earlier in the week, the state Legislature on Friday also passed an expansion on background checks for firearms purchases, which Hickenlooper is expected to sign into law within two weeks.

The background checks bill increases the number of cases in which a $10 criminal background check would be required to legally transfer a gun.

State Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, supported that bill as well as the one limiting magazine capacity. Those legislative measures, he said this morning prior to a scheduled town hall meeting at the nearby Boulder Municipal Building, "will not be perfect, but it beats nothing."

"What we're talking about is just putting reasonable restrictions on guns so that people who have guns for legitimate purposes can have them," he said. "Those that don't have legitimate purposes shouldn't have them."

Colorado is the first state beyond the East Coast to pass significant new gun legislation after the mass shootings last year at the Century 16 movie theaters in Aurora and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

MacIntyre says the completed project will be best in Pac-12There were bulldozers, hard hats, mud, concrete trucks, blueprints, mud, cranes, lots of noise and, uh, mud, during the last recruiting cycle when Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre brought recruits to campus. Full Story

Most people don't play guitar like Grayson Erhard does. That's because most people can't play guitar like he does. The guitarist for Fort Collins' Aspen Hourglass often uses a difficult two-hands-on-the-fretboard technique that Eddie Van Halen first popularized but which players such as Erhard have developed beyond pop-rock vulgarity.
Full Story